Sunday, February 7, 2010

I have been out of the country on vacation for what seems like MOST of the last six weeks. Four weeks galavanting around New Zealand, followed by a week at home, and then a week in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. It's been a whirlwird, and there hasn't been much cooking going on (at least not by me).

In the weeks leading up to the New Zealand vacation, I sort of made a little game out of seeing how much food I could use up out of our pantry/freezer before I left. I did pretty good; but I have come to the conclusion, that if some sort of natural disaster were to hit Ottawa, Canada; and my house survived it, we would still have enough food to last about 6 months.

Does anybody really need 8 different types of vinegar; 6 hot sauces, or 6 open jars of different fruit preserves in the fridge? Then there are the nut butters, cereals and grains, mustards, spices...

Coming home from my travels (with a suitcase full of New Zealand olive oils, avocado oils, chocolates, MORE fruit preserves, Mexican vanilla, agave syryp, dulce de leche, spices... I kid you not), I realized that my work in cleaning out the pantry had only just begun.

And so, I grabbed my jar of natural almond butter, which was so severely separated, I had to get out my hand mixer to blend it back together... and I made these cookies. I also used up a bar of Green and Black's dark chocolate which has been sitting in my secret chocolate stash calling (screeching) my name since my birthday in August.

What amazing willpower! You remark. Well save your breath, I ate so many of these cookies, I would have been better off to just eat the chocolate bar and been done with it. But then, I'd still have that separated jar of almond butter taunting me from the pantry, and I would have had no material for this riveting blog post...